Anet may be having too much fun. Their July 23rd update is called Cutthroat Politics. You are nominally voting for either Ellen Kiel or Evon Gnashblade to take the place of the Council member assassinated several weeks ago, but what you are really voting for will be either cheap Black Lion keys for four weeks and a Fractal based on the Fall of Abbadon (Gnashblade) or cheap waypoint travel for four weeks and a Fractal based on the Thaumanova Reactor explosion (Kiel). Both candidates will be making available a rotation of the newer mini-games like Crab Toss and Southsun Survival.

The too much fun part really shines through in the political commercials they made for each candidate:Evon GnashbladeEllen Kiel

Anet has also added kites to the game, which you can buy from the Gem Store. You can also get your guild logo on them for 15g at the Kite Maker in LA (next to the Guild Banker.) Click the picture to the right to see a video of the kites in action. Oh, and if you purchased gems (or activated a gem card) between April 1, 2013 and June 30, 2013, then you get a random kite (there are three styles) mailed to you in game. They have also added a new musical instrument to the Gem Store: the flute.

The few Soundcloud files Anet has posted have already been downloaded over a million times and to celebrate that, they have uploaded another six sound files. Check out their Soundcloud page to hear the new pieces as well as the old.

Finally, Anet’s Colin Johanson and Martin Kerstein did a Livestream chat on their upcoming plans for Living World and the future of the game. Check it out on their Twitch.tv page (26min). A few notes: they will be bringing back the Aetherblade Retreat and Molten Weapons Facility as Fractals. Blog post on what the non-Living World teams are working on will be up on Thursday. They are considering “world divergence” so that different servers will have different results/stories. Traditional expansion vs. Living World still not decided. LFG tool still being worked on, should be out this year. They looked into porting to a game console and decided against.